If only 1 person has entered a round and the round is ended, that person would just receive their money back.
That said, it's not explicitly necessary that anyone be able to end a round. I could have constrained it to only the players in the round, but I thought this was also an interesting twist.
The project is still very much in it's infancy though, so I'm definitely open to ideas (including the name :D).
I'm super interested in this, but, every time I try this you end up losing me in the funnel. It takes too long to set everything up and I eventually lose interest and exit.
Do you think it would help if I make a "sandbox mode" where you can skip onboarding and plan creation and jump straight into a scenario pre-configured to model one of several selectable templates / personas? That's something I've been debating about building for a while but haven't had a chance yet.
It's true though, making a detailed plan requires detailed inputs. Are there any specific areas in the funnel that you would recommend cutting out or altering?
- when asked rent and house expenses as a percentage, is it a percentage of initial cost? current value? future value? It doesn't really make sense as a percentage. I don't charge a tenant X% of my cost, I charge market rate which may be more, or less than my actual expenses.
- same for taxes. it's a nearly fixed amount that increases over time, but trying to do it as a % calculation of actual dollars is often incorrect because that's not how it's calculated in real life.
I tried it, filled up all the data and the end screen with a "plan" stopped 1 year after my current age with chart lines looking kind of botched. I think some calculations may be wrong or something.
Hmm, this sounds like the kind of thing that could happen if you have a huge percentage value in an expense or tax input by mistake, or something along those lines that could create an immediate bankruptcy scenario. If you double-check everything though and think there is a more sinister issue at play, I'd be happy to look into it and/or help troubleshoot.
JFYI, maybe it is just me, but in Assets ->House you have:
Effective yearly tax rate
Yearly maintenance costs
Yearly insurance rate
I automatically visualize "rate" as a percentage but I see "costs" as being expressed in actual money, so I inserted (believed to be inserting) 2,000 Euro in maintenance costs which of course ended up being 2,000% of the asset value.
Quickest bankrupt ever!
Maybe Yearly Maintenance Rate would be less prone to possible errors?
Ah good call. I see how that can be confusing. Hopefully I'll also be able to add in a system where you can toggle some of these inputs between percent and fixed value as well.
Your simulator seems to work "by category", i.e. it takes expenses for the house (taxes, maintenance, insurance) from the value of the asset?
I.e. with constant income fixed 6000 (salary until retirement and same amount as pension, tax exempt, todays money, follow inflation), no living expenses, and only a house with value fixed to 200000 (but adjusted to inflation), 1% tax, 1% maintenance, 1% insurance, the value of the asset decreases.
That should be 6000 income tax exempt, 6000 expenses, same house, everything fixed but adjusted to inflation.
But it is not like you are going to pay taxes, maintenance or insurance with "slices" of your house.
Anyway, with those values I start at 25 Net Worth 200,000 (only the house) and end up at 92 with a house worth 26000 and a lot of cash, 121000.
Hmmm, if you open up the "House" asset form and look at the "Value Change Over Time" field within the During Ownership section is it definitely set to "Match Inflation"? I just tried to replicate your scenario, and in mine the house maintains the 200k value throughout the simulation.
Of course not, it isn't but it seems like it is (to me at least).
In the Wizard:
House 200000 200000 paid off
Acknowledge, etc. Confirm
Create a Plan
etc.
Now I have Other Asset value 200,000, Already Owned, cancels out Rent expenses during ownership, Value is fixed only adjusted for inflation, never sold
etc.
House starts at age 25 200,000, arrives at age 92 at 25,986.
25 first year is 200,000
26 second year is 194,000
27 third year is 188,180
The asset is defined "Fixed value only adjusted for inflation".
Of course if I enter the asset and change from "none" (that is now explained as "Inflation of 3% will decrease asset value over time") to "Match inflation" (that is explained as "Asset value will increase over time matching the inflation rate of 3%" and comes out on the main plan as "Value increases to match inflation" I get the "flat graph" I expected.
The issue is about the wording:
"Fixed value only adjusted for inflation"
vs:
"Value increases to match inflation"
The (fixed) value of an asset cannot "increase to match" (it is fixed) it can only be "adjusted to match".
As I see it the first one is "Fixed not adjusted to anything" and the second is "Fixed but adjusted to match inflation". (and something like these will disambiguate from Appreciate/Depreciate).
BTW the actual Appreciate/Depreciate % needs to be increased/decreased of inflation rate.
As I see it, there should be three possibilities only:
Fixed
Appreciate (and its %)
Depreciate (and its %)
and then a separate checkbox for "Match Inflation".
As an example, if you have Inflation at 3% and select Appreciate 1%, the result is a declining value (as you have no way to Appreciate it 1% AND match inflation, while it is common - at least here - to consider appreciation rate not as absolute but the difference over inflation, it should be specified/explained that there you need to put an absolute rate including inflation).
I had roughly the same experience but it was 10 years instead of 1. I just took the defaults for tax rates and stuff because frankly it already felt enough like doing my taxes just to get an idea of how the thing worked.
When you say it stopped, did it show a bankruptcy condition for you or more like a weird unexplained simulation stoppage? If the latter, I'll look into it right away, and if you can identify any simple reproduction steps that would be very helpful.
It seems that this is a difficult problem to solve. These kinds of tools don't provide a lot of value unless they have a significant portion of your financial picture. Providing that picture takes a lot of manual data entry. I suppose it could ask more generic questions first (e.g., "enter total cash," "enter total investments," etc.) but that wouldn't be very accurate.
I'd say the premium / monetization aspect is something I'm still open to suggestions on. I knew I wanted most functionality to be free, so that everyone could use the tool to develop insights about their potential life trajectory and trade-offs between different decisions, and I didn't want anyone to feel priced out of that experience. Likewise, I didn't want to bombard people with ads, and would never want to collect and sell data or anything like that. Currently, even more advanced features like monte carlo mode are available for free... I felt all this left me with few remaining monetization options, so I'm currently trying the model where data persistence (bringing more convenient repeat use) is one of the premium features. If you keep the tab open and then eventually upgrade, your data will stay.. but currently it will disappear if you close the app without a subscription.
There's also some uncertainty around persistence of data if I start a paid plan (or trial) but do not continue.
Does the data I'd entered thus far get purged, and I would have to re-enter it if I picked the plan back up?
I feel like this kind of tool might be something I'd update once a quarter or once a year, but not want to pay for every month. But if my data is deleted in between uses, it's also a lot less useful. Is there a rational middle ground?
If you go to cancel a subscription, there should be a modal that pops up warning that persisted data will be removed if you continue to cancel.
And yeah I see your point on wanting to come back and update things periodically. Is this perhaps where the yearly / lifetime plan options make more sense? Or are those priced too steeply in your estimation?
> If you go to cancel a subscription, there should be a modal that pops up warning that persisted data will be removed if you continue to cancel.
There's no way to know that before choosing a paid plan though, is there?
I'm not a good person to ask - I avoid spending money (I think) much more so than most people. And I wrote my own software for tracking all my finances (with zero graphs.) So I'm hesitant to spend money on other software.
Depending on a person's weakness or uncertainty, this kind of software can fill in a lot of gaps and help them make decisions that can dwarf the cost of your software, so I doubt the pricing is prohibitive.
As always, take me picking apart your software as a token of interest and a compliment. (I really wish I'd start picking up graphs from my back log...!)
> There's no way to know that before choosing a paid plan though, is there?
On the home page in the "How it Works" section, there's a screenshot showing how you can remove your data. Perhaps I should make that even more prominent though, since evidently not everyone notices.
One possible suggestion is a one-time payment option. In a couple of my projects I have daily/weekly/monthly plans that allow people to pay up, use the features and then go away without worrying about long-term financial consequences. Maybe an option were someone can pay up, export their data and then whenever they want to import it back in they sign up for another short plan.
Maybe persist for the free plan but only for a month. That should give me enough time to decide if I want to convert.
I feel like a lot of products with subscription plans want to convert too quickly. I have a full time job and family. Life gets in the way of being able to dedicate full attention to getting something setup.
